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Nyantastic (SZS 231v2)

by slyborg

Our Lady of Bizarre Lyrics

Alrighty, first of the leftover Oyashiro tank re-edits. He originally did these approximately two years ago, which gives you some idea of how long we’ve been dead. Our original release of the original magazine version was in April 2011, this was one of the chapters animated in the BD extra released January 2012. Yes, it’s been 3 years since SZS got its last animated release.

I started with this one because the tank extra was a papercraft page with almost no text. Then I decided to put up the TL Notes on the wiki, having forgotten that this one had Kumeta in rare form, with not one, but two Despair Lists and a panel of background references to boot. I know that there are approximately zero people that actually read the TL Notes, but we do these things not because they are popular, but because we are enormous weebs that thrive on suffering.

This also happens to be one of the most difficult to translate chapters in the series, being essentially sound puns in Japanese the whole way. Umin just left the “nyan/nan” thing stand, the anime sub by [gg] tried to make a rhyme in English and made it even less comprehensible IMHO.

Well, if you want to miss most of the jokes and don’t want to learn anything about Japanese history, culture, society and language, then, of course, not reading the TL notes (or wiki.kumetan.net) is the best way there is.

As for “Träumerei”: Kafuka sung it in the first ep of “Zoku SZS”, Nami’s introduction story, if I’m not mistaken.
Page 3: Nankô means ointment.
Page 6, panel 1: There’s Dômo-kun (どーもくん), the beloved mascot of NHK, behind Kiri.
Page 7: “If the ‘stolen bike’ were ‘tied tights'”: “Stolen bike” (盗んだバイク, nusunda baiku) is taken from a really famous Japanese song: “15の夜” (Jûgo no yoru; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu88zx_–wE). This was Yutaka Ozakis (尾崎 豊) debut single in 1983. The refrain starts with: “盗んだバイクで走り出す” (Nusunda baiku de hashiridasu): “Hashiridasu” is “to begin to run” and “de” is “with, by; by means of; by using.” Now do the math yourself and swap “stolen bike” with “tied tights.”
Page 11:
– The KGB was the Soviet…
– 学校 and 脱肛 end both in “-ô” (or “-ou” or “-oh”, whatever you prefer. But since you’ve already written “Renhou” and “Kansouki”, you can’t just write “-o.”).
– 発光ダイオード is “hakkô daiôdo” and 薄幸大往生 is “hakkô daiôjô.”

Regarding the subs: Well, they did their best, I guess. When translating something I’m also no fan of inventing something new instead of sticking to the source, and I really hate localisations (I still don’t know what’s so bad eating with chopsticks, paying with yen or calling a girl Shizuka. Are Americans that much afraid of other cultures? In this respect, the US version of “Doraemon” is just pitiful.).
But on the other hand you have to make the text comprehensible for a larger audience than “just” for insiders. Sometimes there is no way to reproduce the author’s intentions with the same or nearly the same number of words. Then you have to come up with something new to entertain people.

Hughes-san, hisashiburi. Thanks for the corrections/additions! I don’t know why I always mix up Zoku and Zan And I confess to extreme laziness in transliteration, there was some cut and paste going on there and macrons frequently get lost.

I second Gate7. Part of the fun of this series is that it is a painless way to learn about another culture (and see what they do with their transmogrification of Western culture). Thanks for the new episode.